


Grim Reflection

by JustAboveInsanity



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Reflection, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-17 05:30:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16089038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAboveInsanity/pseuds/JustAboveInsanity
Summary: Clementine reflects, briefly, on how they ended up where they are.(Short drabble about reflecting on the past and making mistakes.)





	Grim Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> What's this? Me making a fic for an entirely different fandom so I don't have to look at my ongoing works? It's more likely then you'd think.
> 
> If it looks wonky please let me know, it won't load the preview so I can check it over and make sure things were done properly.
> 
> And if you like it, I'll probably be posting another short drabble soon; it'll probably be separate from this one though.

As the wind clawed at her hair, howling in what she could perhaps determine as sick glee or anguish, Clementine found herself recalling a fleeting interaction with Luke. He had asked how they got to where they were, or something along those lines ( _Clem was less focused on the words exchanged, more on remembering their faces as time passed,_ ) and she had simply said it was best not to think about it.

She still stood by that, to a degree.

There were so many variables, so many unaccounted for _consequences_ to her actions, and the actions of others. And as it came crashing down on them, like some flimsy house of cards, she had set her naive eyes only to the end of the carnage. To their temporary goal.

( _She sometimes wonders how things would have gone had handled that first encounter with Arvo differently, or if she'd kept a better eye on Rebecca; if things could have ended more in their favor. Without the blood, the ice, the pain. All the death and **betrayal**._ )

It was best not to question how someone got to a certain point in this new world. Too many difficult moral choices to rake back through, too many actions to **regret** ; she had seen it drive people mad. She had seen the sorrow and the malice in Kenny's eyes when his world shattered for the last time. She had realized, much too late, a similar look in Jane's eyes- the burden of Jane's guilt and fear- before her friend had snuffed out her own light.

But now, as her ears rang, the rain pelting against her skin ( _the blood of two more people on her hands_ ) she stared at AJ and wondered how they got to where they were.

She thought about teaching him to shoot. She thought about the words she told him time and time again, parroted back to her now with a much more grim context then she had ever imagined.

_"What? I aimed for the head."_

She feels like she was the one who was shot.  
 _(Feels like maybe she'd deserve it, too.)_

She had taught him that, had gotten him to memorize the phrase, the **action** \- but AJ was so young. She had taught him to shoot, but not quite _what_ to shoot, and it was a realization that came too little too late. She couldn't recall a time she ever heard the boy call them walkers, only ever monsters. She never taught him the difference between a monster and a person, resigned to the belief that maybe they were one and the same in this new world.

( _She tried not to remember what Lee had told her, once, years ago. About how she should never kill another human person unless she had to. How it changes someone. She tried not to think about how she forgot that lesson, after everything she'd gone through, and neglected to pass it on to AJ._ )

Marlon must've looked like a monster in the dim moonlight. Eyes wild, Brody's blood speckled across his face- hands shaking, fingers twitching, ready to pull the trigger. A loose canon. And after his surrender, after the fight had left him, AJ must have simply seen an opening, a chance to take down that monster before he could take Clementine from him.

And Clementine had front row seats to the unveiling of all her failures.

She was beginning to wonder when her best would finally be enough as the stunned silence came to an end.


End file.
